And that our little inch of time-suffering
isn't worthy of our first night's welcome home
to heaven.
Yes, God goes with his child through pain.
Here's another thing I want to say.
God uses us to his glory and our
blessing.
You see, first, he has some promise exemption.
Secondly, he goes with us into it.
And now third, he uses it to his
glory and our blessing.
God uses pain to make us trust him
more.
In verse 9 of this tremendous passage, we
had the sentence of death in ourselves that
we shouldn't trust in ourselves, but in God,
who raises the dead.
And what happens is simply this.
God takes us to the very end of
our tether at times, simply in order to
make us trust him as the God of
resurrection.
You see, you and I are so prone
to self-confidence and to self-trust and
to self-obeisance.
And the old nature dies so hard, we're
so boastful, so confident, so sure of ourselves.
And then, right into our life, God sends
suffering.
He permits Satan to buffet us.
He sends us far, and he brings us
very low.
Why?
Just to help us to trust him more
and to see him as he is, the
God, the God of resurrection life, the God
who has life in himself.
And God uses pain also in order that
we might be able to comfort others.
And that's what Paul is stressing here.
Experience shows us, he says, that the more
we share in Christ's sufferings, the more we
are able to give of his encouragement.
And how true this is.
We can comfort another, like one who has
passed the same way before.
Who?
Pain?
God uses pain in order that we will
comfort him.
God uses pain in order that we will
be able to comfort others.
We'll be able to say, well, this is
what happened to me.
I was in that kind of experience.
And you're not just saying it for the
sake of duplicating what is happening.
But you're saying it to the glory of
God.
And you say, I was in that kind
of experience once.
But God did something different.
I cried to the Lord, and he helped
me.
Oh, how wonderfully true this is.
Humbly I asked of God to give me
joy, to crown my life with blossoms of
delight.
I prayed for happiness without a lie, desiring
that my pathway might be bright.
I sought these blessings to attain.
And now I thank him that he gave
me pain.
For with my pain and sorrow came to
me a dower of tenderness in act and
thought.
And with the suffering came a sympathy, an
insight that success had never brought.
Father, I had been foolish and unblessed.
If thou has granted me my blind request.
Help others when you can tell them that
God was faithful to you.
That against his promise you put the words
or the letters T and P, T and
P.
I don't need to remind you what that
means.
Tried and proved, tested and proved the promise
of God.
And I believe that God gives to us
pain as a token of trust, as a
symbol of his trust in us, as a
token of his confidence.
As F.B. Meyer, great saint of God,
who in the days of his great powers
preached from this very pulpit, and whose books
are still books to be bought up if
you ever see any of them anywhere.
F.B. Meyer, trials are God's confidence in
us.
He uses pain.
I love the way in which the Overseas
Missionary Fellowship speaks of this, when one of
their number is laid aside in sickness, or
two or three or a dozen.
This is how they phrase it.
So and so has been, quotes, entrusted with
sickness, end quote.
Made a trustee of pain.
Yes indeed.
God hasn't promised exemption from pain.
God goes with us right through our pain.
God uses pain for his glory, our good,
and the blessing of others.
One final word.
God delivers us from the evil at the
heart of pain, because there is evil there.
And Satan, by every measure of his ability,
will endeavor to overturn completely the work of
God in us.
He'll try to destroy it.
What God undertakes when he makes suffering a
test, a stern and rugged test, and it
can be exceedingly grievous, no chastening for the
innocent is pleasant.
Afterwards it may yield the peaceful fruits of
righteousness, but once you have passed through it,
it is most unpleasant, most unpleasant.
And you have to bear and forbear many
things.
I think of a man in terrible pain.
Two weeks ago, he'd been in terrible pain,
agonizing pain for 24 hours.
His wife, out of consideration for the doctor,
called the doctor during the night and called
him.
Just about 7.30 in the morning, the
doctor was able to get round quite quickly
and didn't know anything.
He was in the hospital.
And the pain was getting worse.
And he was admitted to emergency.
And when he was admitted to emergency, the
nurse said, Well, we can do nothing for
you just now.
All the nurses here have gone for lunch.
Isn't it strange, the kind of thing that
can happen?
I think it's true of all of you,
of how many of you, certainly.
And God forgive us that we are uncharitable,
if we are uncharitable in our judgments.
Very often, very, very often, those who are
lying in beds of real pain suffer so
much at the hands of those who are
supposed to be helping.
And also, so much at the hands of
their friends who come to visit them, who
haven't the sense to see the agony of
their dear one.
Why, not so long ago, a dear friend
of mine said, one day, I think it
was the lowest day of all my sickness,
he said to me, there were a couple
who came in and they stayed for a
couple of hours and I just couldn't bear
the pain.
I just couldn't bear it.
And they sat there and they talked for
two hours.
And they kept on asking me questions and
I was wishing they would just jump out
the window.
It was suffering.
And they didn't see it.
There are many ways in which this can
happen.
I was very wise.
I've been talking with Dr. Carl Henry.
I remember lying in a hospital bed with
some pain.
And Dr. Henry came to see me.
And he said, now, you know as well
as I do what the rules are in
this.
I'm not going to sit down because it
will be more difficult for you to see
me.
I'm just going to stand up and I'm
going to stand at the right angle for
your eye.
And he said, I'm not going to stay
long.
We're just going to...
I'm just looking in, just...
But he stayed long enough.
Long enough.
Do you see the infinite courtesy, do you
see the infinite wisdom of that man?
Not even sitting down, just setting himself at
the right angle for my eye.
And stood at a certain point of the
bed and then waited just so long.
Word of prayer, he was gone.
Thank God for wise men and women who
understand.
And this is really all in the nature
of an aside, but I mention it because
at some time or another you're going to
be touching other lives who are passing through
this very situation.
Sometimes the greatest comfort is absolute silence.
I tell you the greatest distress that can
be caused to any Christian when they are
really suffering is to be told that they
need not be suffering in faith to believe.
God will deliver, God will deliver from the
evil at the heart of pain.
And that's what Paul means when he says
our light affliction which is but for a
moment is working up for us a far
more excellent and exceeding weight of glory while
we look not at the things which are
seen but at the things which are not
seen.
For the things which are seen are temporary
but the things which are not seen are
eternal.
And this is victory with a capital V.
God giving us the holy confidence in himself
so that we know and trust that he
knows what he is doing and what he
is doing is best and he will yet
perfect that which concerns us.
Remember every testing brings with it the possibility
of defeat.
Pain, even for the Christian, can harden his
heart but God will deliver if our trust
and confidence is all together in him.
He will deliver.
God in the Bible, the living God, he
will deliver.
He will deliver.
He will keep you from falling.
He will keep to the end.
What a Savior.
What a wonderful friend.
Let me pray.
Gracious and merciful God, some here have passed
through very grievous pain and still are passing
through it.
Some have passed through the pain of great
bereavement.
Have mercy for them today.
Oh, make thyself known unto them in great
power.
And if for us there is appointed in
David the pain and the suffering, we would
naturally flee.
Oh, deliver us.
Oh, preserve us.
And be glorified.
And make us a blessing.
Christ our Lord we pray.
Amen.